Mobile devices having a built-in rear-facing camera, including tablets, computers and smartphones are often used by organizations to provide customer check in upon arrival, to stream line front office staff work flow, and to improve customer experience. It is advantageous to both the staff and the customer to be able to use the mobile device to perform all required check-in functions, including capturing images of important documents such as identification documents, insurance cards or any other card or picture. One example of the use of mobile devices is in the field of health care. Examples of health care organizations making use of such devices include, but are not limited to, medical offices, physician offices, convenient care clinics, urgent care clinics, vaccine mobile clinics, blood donation mobile clinics, hospitals, federally qualified health centers and rural health centers. Other examples outside the health care field include check-in at hotels and customer-facing activities of business or government organizations.
In order to conveniently capture the image of a document, such as a card, it is necessary to have a document holder which attaches to the tablet or other mobile device, or to a device enclosure designed to enclose the tablet or other mobile device. The document must be easily inserted into the holder, and the holder must conveniently position the document within the field of view of the device camera so that a clearly focused image of the correct size will be produced.
Document holders of existing practice usually position the document at a fixed distance from the device camera, which may not be optimum for different mobile device types. Consequently, either camera focusing quality and image size is non-optimal, or a custom document holder must be provided for each different mobile device type.
A further problem with document holders of existing practice is that the document holder attachment is rigid and of fixed length, so that it is awkward and inconvenient to carry a hand held mobile device with the document holder in position.
Yet another problem with document holders of existing practice is that there is usually no provision for an external light source, so that image quality may suffer in low light conditions.
Therefore there exists a need for a document holder for attaching to a mobile device or a mobile device enclosure, wherein the document holder and the document holder arm may be folded away close to the mobile device when not in use, and wherein the document holder arm can be extended manually or automatically to position the document at an optimum position and distance relative to the device camera.